Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [53]
Muñoz’s optimism was, at the very least, ill founded. He was probably not aware that the people of the Kali Grounds’ bustees had made their first stand against the harmful effects of his beautiful plant. The state of the country he was leaving was even more worrisome. India was once again suffering from drought. All through the month of June, millions of men, women and children watched the sky for the first signs of the monsoon. Usually, it begins with a few days of buffeting wind. Then, suddenly, the sky darkens. Huge clouds roll in upon each other, scudding along at a fantastic rate. Other clouds succeed them, enormous, as if trimmed with gold. A few moments later, a mighty gust of wind brings a hurricane of dust. Finally a new bank of black clouds plunges the sky into darkness, an interminable roll of thunder rends the air, and the monsoon has begun. Agni, the fire god of the Vedas, protector of humanity and the hearth, hurls his thunderbolts. The great warm drops turn into cataracts of water. Children throw themselves, stark naked, shrieking for joy, into the deluge. Men are exultant and, under the verandas, women sing hymns of thanksgiving.
That year, however, in several regions, water, life and rebirth failed to keep their appointment. Their seedlings were parched and, in the stranglehold of debt, millions of ruined peasants had been unable to buy fertilizers or pesticides. In 1976, the sales figures for Sevin had dropped by half. Another severe blow after the drought of the previous year.
Nonetheless a pleasant surprise awaited Eduardo Muñoz on his return to New York. In recognition of his faithful services, the company had made him president of the international division of agricultural products. The appointment ceremony took place at the new head office Carbide had just opened after selling its Park Avenue headquarters to Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Bank. A decision that so distressed the municipal government that the governor of New York, Hugh Carey, and two senators had tried to dissuade Bill Sneath from moving the prestigious multinational out of Manhattan. They offered him subsidies and tax shelters. In ten years the city had lost the headquarters of forty-four of the largest American companies and with them some five hundred thousand jobs. All the promises in the world could not persuade Carbide’s CEO to change his mind. He had systematically enumerated the disadvantages of New York, a city that both he and his colleagues judged to be overpopulated, expensive and unsafe. Moreover, standards of education were execrable, transportation was inadequate and taxes were exorbitant. The company had chosen, instead, a particularly imposing site set in the middle of a hundred-acre estate that was home to deer and other wildlife. It was situated near Danbury, a charming little town in Connecticut whose hat factory had been supplying sheriffs, senators, gangsters and America’s middle class for two centuries. The new headquarters were shaped in the form of an airport terminal with satellite wings, underground parking, auditoriums, lecture rooms, libraries, a bank, five restaurants, a fitness center, a hospital, a hairdresser, a gift shop, a newspaper stand, a travel agent and car rental, a television studio, a printer, an information center, acres of air-conditioned offices and even a one-and-a-quarter-mile jogging track. All the evidence suggested that the proud manufacturers of methyl isocyanate had found a headquarters to suit the company’s renown, importance and ambitions for the planet. It was said to have cost a mere eight hundred million dollars.
In the peaceful suburbs of West Virginia, in the vicinity of the Institute’s industrial site, the smell was an unfamiliar one. It was not MIC’s boiled cabbage, but the aroma of the small, fiery, red chilies so essential to spicy Indian cooking. “They rustled up their food in the rooms we’d rented for them,” engineer Warren Woomer would explain.